Iran

The diplomatic manoeuvrings over the situation around Iran are entering a crucial phase with an Iranian delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi leaving from Tehran for Paris today to pick up the threads of the 3-way discussions involving France, Iran and the United States at Biarritz a week […]

From all accounts, Tehran is struggling to cope with the startling news in the weekend from the G7 summit at Biarritz that a meeting between the presidents of the US and Iran is to be expected in the “coming weeks”. The cautiously optimistic tone struck by the French President Emmanuel […]

The political changes which have been transforming the Middle East for the last two months are not the result of the destruction of any of the protagonists, but the evolution of the Iranian, Turkish and Emirati points of view. Where the military might of the United States has failed, the subtlety of Russian diplomacy has succeeded.

The seizures of vessels constitute a recipe for a tit-for-tat calamity. We are already seeing the bitter fruit of the harvest arising out of the seizure of Grace I. Two oil tankers – the UK registered Stena Impero, and the Mesdar, another Liberian registered vessel though British operated – were subsequently seized in the Strait of Hormuz.

Last month’s Japanese elections saw Prime Minister Abe’s ruling bloc lose its two-thirds parliamentary supermajority needed to change the country’s pacifist constitution, which could seriously slow down the US’ “Indo-Pacific” strategy, especially regarding the formation of an anti-Iranian naval coalition in the Gulf and the possible military expansion of the […]

The rise of tension in the Gulf has nothing to do with an alleged Iranian threat. In fact, it is the second round of Mossadegh’s anti-imperialist policy, before the mollahs. Just as in 1952, London is ready to go to war to defend its undeserved economic advantages. But if the British were to win this round, a few years later they would lose in Suez to the United States.

The seizure of a British oil tanker by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on July 20 in the Strait of Hormuz has all the hallmarks of a retaliatory act in the downstream of the seizure of an Iranian tanker by the British Navy exactly two weeks ago on July 4 […]

The central theme to Trump’s copy book can be said to be this: to conserve a cosy position with one authoritarian regime necessitates a punitive approach to another. A calculus for the voter comes into play: you can only fool the electors some of the time. To that end, much has been leveraged on the anti-China sentiment and chest thumping before the Iranian mullahs.

Turkey’s cooperation is vital for the US to plug Iran’s land route to Syria’s ports in eastern Mediterranean and the US bases in eastern Turkey are key intelligence outposts eavesdropping on Iran. Similarly, the US hopes to keep a “very large” intelligence presence in the Afghan bases, which requires Pakistan’s acquiescence.

Fundamentally, both Erdogan and Modi are testing the potentials of Eurasianism and the multipolar world order to create space for navigating their countries as emerging regional powers. China, Japan, Turkey and India are stakeholders in easing the tensions over the US-Iran standoff.

The US President Donald Trump is learning that Persian is a tricky language and does not easily yield its hidden charms to westerners. The western media attributed to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani a remark during his televised speech on June in Tehran 25 to the effect that the White House […]

Even more than Syria, Iran is now at the heart of the confrontation between East and West. The astounded public is witnessing Washington’s daily about-turns in what seems – mistakenly – to be an escalation towards war between the two countries. But this is not what it is about.